Thursday, December 24, 2009

Some random pictures, my children having a yard sale in the living room (they wanted to sell me their toys, take my money but keep the toys! LOL) eating lunch, my son being naked which is his favorite thing these days, and snuggling daddy.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Yes, I'm aware that I haven't posted yet this month, and the month is half over. Things are just busy around here, as usual. Jeff has started taking the train to work, which often means he leaves here at 5AM and returns at 620PM, so he's only here for an hour or so of kid time, and he's generally too tired to do much besides eat dinner and go to bed.

Amelia's participating in the nutcracker with her ballet school, and the rehearsals are nuts. Three hours on Saturday, class plus an hour or two extra on her regular day, extra classes on Wednesdays, dress rehearsal on Thursday, shows on Friday and Saturday. I also need to sew fake fur and a tail on her costume. I have finally perfected the proper bun,it requires lots of gel and a hairnet, still working on the correct makeup. (The kid is 4! Who knew ballet was so serious.)

She had her Christmas show for preschool on Saturday, it was too cute. We also had three parties to attend last weekend. I did a lot of baking for two of the parties, which although it was time consuming, I enjoyed it. I still have a few loaves of pumpkin bread I need to make and Jeff needs a coffee cake made for work for Wednedsday.

I'm still doing the playgroup stuff out here, although it's slowed down for now, I'm only doing 1 or 2 activities a week until after Christmas, we're just too busy right now.

Ant is doing well. The number of words he's speaking has great improved. Finally! Some of the things he says are pretty funny though. He won't say Amelia's name, once in a while he calls her Ma ma. And for himself he usually says "me". Lately though he calls both Amelia and himself "baby". So when he was going to bed tonight, to me and Amelia he said "Goodnight Mama. Goodnight Baby." So cute.

So yeah, that's what's going on around here. We've had lots of rain the last week which I love. Still drama going on with my family, but I'm trying not to worry about it. I can't do anything about it, except try and support the people who are around trying to take care of the kiddos. Anyway. If I don't get back here anytime soon, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And if you celebrate some other holidays, I hope those are great too.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.Spray 9 x 13 inch pan liberally until coated.Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.Separate eggs.Beat egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in milk and vanilla.Pour egg yolk mixture over flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With mixer on, pour in 1/4 cup sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry.Fold egg white mixture into other mixture very gently until just combined.Pour into prepared pan and spread to even out surface.Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.Turn cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow to cool.

Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and 1/2 cup heavy cream in a small pitcher.When cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork several times.Slowly drizzle all but about 1 cup of the milk mixture—try to get as much around the edges of the cake as you can.Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes.Whip 1 pint heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar until thick and spreadable.Spread over the surface of the cake. Decorate cake with whole or chopped maraschino cherries. Cut into squares and serve.

1.Preheat over to 325. Mix flour, butter, granulated sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer on low speed until just blended. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is no longer crumbly and just comes together. (This took a really long time. I kept thinking that I did something wrong, but eventually it all became one glob of dough.)2. Press dough evenly into a 9 inch round cake pan. Sprinkle with course sugar.3. Bake until golden brown, 30-40 minutes. (35 for me) Cut still-warm shortbread with a fork, tines down into 16 wedge shape pieces with shaggy edges. Cool completely, then invert pan onto a work surface and carefully separate cookies.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

So my friend over at SugarPopRibbons is doing a ton of giveaways right now! You should go check out her blog. One of her giveaways is for awesome bath stuff from Kristine's shower. Go check out her post about it here.

I usually soften the cream cheese and butter in the microwave at decreased power. Cream butter and cream cheese together until well mixed. Mix in egg yolk and vanilla. Beat in cake mix 1/3 at a time until mixed well- depending on your mixer you may need to beat in the last 1/3 by hand. Cover and refrigerate cookie dough for 30 minutes or until chilled. Preheat oven to 375. You can drop the dough by teaspoonfuls or roll into balls- I will say the roll into ball cookies are much prettier. For the cookie cups, roll into a 1-1.5" ball and press into a greased mini muffin pan. Make indent in cookie with finger. Bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes. Cookies are done when bottom is set and slightly darkened- be careful, cookies are easy to burn.

Just a tip your first batch will probably cook for a minute longer than subsequent batches, just in my experience with various ovens. So if you find that your first batch is done at 8 minutes (and I always check at 6 or 7 minutes even with the first batch), then check your 2nd batch a minute sooner. Also, cookies will be slightly set- if you eat one fresh out of the oven it will be like eating a very hot slightly set piece of dough (which is absolutely delicious but very messy). As cookies cool they will set more. Cool on pan at least 3 minutes before moving off cookie sheet. For these cookies, as with most cookies, I find it is extremely important to use a good quality cookie sheet- not an old, burnt one or a cheap thin one. My favorite for a flat cookie sheet is a Wearever Air Bake cookie sheet. For the mini muffins I bought a heavy duty Wilton mini muffin pan. It is a very heavy pan, nice and thick. The bottoms of the cookies burn easy, so this is important. Another thing I do to check if the cookies are done, using a metal turner, the cookies are done (on a cookie sheet) when you can lift part of the cookie without it immediately falling apart and bottom of cookie is darker than top.

I am so frustrated right now. I don't want to air a bunch of dirty laundry, I just want to vent a little. I should be sleeping, but I can't. Writing is like therapy. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep after I vent a bit.

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It's one thing if you want to screw up your life. Go out and do your crazy $hit. I don't care. But it's not okay to be doing that stuff while you take care of your babies! They deserve better than that. I'm done with you. I'm over it. I won't be helping you ever again.

At the same time though, I can't totally turn my back. Not when there are kiddos involved. I don't know how to cut off the crazy people(this means you!), and still help and support the kids(your children, ya know the ones you are supposed to love and protect.)

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I am just so angry right now. I'm angry at you and I'm frightened for your children. I don't often say that I hate anyone or anything. But right now, I hate you.

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Sometimes I wonder if I should set up a live journal blog. Then I can have posts that are private and no one can read them ( I think that's how it works anyway.)

Monday, November 16, 2009

I am failing at posting every day. I totally forgot to post yesterday, and I've pretty much nothing to say today. We've been so busy lately. I'm helping run a playgroup, so I'm scheduling tons of activities which is good, but I have to go to all of them right now. And Amelia's got school which involves a lot of driving. And she is going to be in the nutcracker in December, so she has lots of long rehearsals. But she seems to enjoy it so that's all that matters right?

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Hi. It's Saturday. I had a migraine today. Throwing up while your head is exploding sucks. I spent three hours at Amelia's ballet studio while she practiced for the nutcracker. We finally got the rest of the sod for the backyard.

Friday, November 13, 2009

I just figured out how to put a button for twitter up on my blog. So, you should all go follow me. Because I need more followers. Yup. (Can you all tell that I'm running out of things to blog about this month?) So you should click on the bird up there, and then follow me and I will also follow you. Okay? Okay!

I can't find the link for the person who tagged me. I'll add it later.

Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. 2. Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself. 3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. 4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Random things about me:

1. I drink tea every day. 2. I love baking, but I hate doing dishes. 3. I get bored easily. I need to change things up pretty often. 4. I love to read, and will generally read anything I can get my hands one. 5. I crave alone time. It's something I don't really get with two little ones in the house. 6. I have asked Amelia 5 times in the last 10 minutes to get dressed. Her clothes are out for her ready to go, but she will not get dressed. When I tried to help her get dressed she told me to leave her alone and let her do it herself. Battles like this are slowly driving me batty. 7. I just had egg beaters, a laughing cow wedge, and some tomatoes, all scrambled together, for breakfast. Yum!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

So I forgot to come online and write a blog this morning. I was busy doing laundry, and feeding the kids breakfast, and changing sheets on the beds. I meant to write a post after that, but I had to pack our lunches and get the kids to the park on time for the play date I hosted. I was going to just put up a picture after the park, but I got wrapped up in planning our menus for the week, and making my grocery list while supervising Amelia doing arts and crafts. (Anthony was napping.) I planned to just type a few words real fast after nap time, but then we had to go the grocery store. After dragging two grouchy kids through the grocery store, and then unloading the van and putting everything away with my two little helpers, I wasn't really in the mood to get on the computer. Instead, I started dinner, read the kids a story, put the garbage cans away, and even managed to lock the kids and myself out of the house. While we were out there I did some weeding and watered the new sod in the back yard. At least I had dinner in the oven before we got locked out. Then I managed to get the lock to work and we got back in the house. We ate dinner, the kids played and I cleaned up the kitchen, did dishes and swept and mopped the kitchen and dining room. The whole time I was thinking, "I need to go put something up on my blog!" I was headed to the computer when I remembered that we left a sweater at the park today so I drove back across town to see if it was still there. It was! When I got back home it was time for baths and bed.

So here I am at 930 PM finally writing my post for the day. Maybe I should just write tomorrow's post while I'm here...

Monday, November 09, 2009

I am so tired today! Bleh, I just can't seem to wake up. I had to work in Amelia's class room too; it was fun, but it threw off my morning, I got nothing accomplished. And Jeff's working late because he had to stay home with Anthony this morning. So yeah. Instead of taking Amelia to ballet, I want to get in my bed and sleep.

My blog and I totally got into a fight last night. (Or maybe I was going around with my internet connection, I'm not really sure.) Either way I missed posting! I wrote a nice little post about our weekend and other very interesting things; however, I never got it to actually post. Oh well, we'll just count this as Sunday's post. Thirty posts in thirty days. Two of them will just have to be today.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Yes this conversation occurred today at story time at our local library. It's a large group of caregivers and children, and there were at least forty people there. This mom was sitting on the floor in the front row and she was wearing those awful low rise jeans. (I'm sure they look great on someone, but it sure isn't me or a lot of other mamas) She also had a really short shirt on. Standing up she looked nice. When she sat down though, the problem presented itself. For the whole story time, I and the 38 other people in the room saw her ass. And I don't mean the jiggles above the butt, we were looking at full on crack. I felt really bad for her, but I figured going up to her after the stories were finished and letting her know about the problem would just embarrass her further.

So internet, what would you have done? Would you have quietly moved next to her during story time and said something? Waited until afterward and mentioned it politely for next time? Or would you do what I did, which was nothing at all? (Although I did refrain from pointing and laughing so that's good right?)

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Remember when I mentioned my to do list a couple of weeks ago? I talked about cleaning up my coupon mess. Well I got most of those tasks completed that day and have since finished everything except for the coupons. I have been trying to figure out a good way to organize my coupons. I've found a few things to make at home, but so far none of them are really working for me.

So, I've decided to check out some of the options I can buy. On one hand, I keep thinking that it's silly to spend money for a coupon system since the whole point is to save money. At the same time, I know myself and if I have better tools, I can be much more efficient.

So far, the best option I've come up with is the Couponizer. Yes, the name is kind of goofy. I'll admit that. But I've seen a couple of reviews that are good so I think I'm going to try it out. There are a few more options I want to look at before I make a final decision, so I'll let you all know what I end up with and how I like it. In the mean time, have any of you used any particular item to organize your coupons?

Oh and on the topic of saving money, I found a great website for all sorts of free and cheap stuff. It has tons of great deals. Go check out http://www.forthemommas.com/

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

So I know the topic of this Tackle is not very exciting. Really, who cares about vertical blinds? Well I do! Since we got our windows put in last June, the blinds over the sliding door have been broken. The window people broke them; they were also supposed to repair them but that didn't happen. The were still intact, but we couldn't open or close them. Jeff's friend Mike got rid of his blinds and happened to have the piece we needed for ours. The new piece (which is about 10 feet long) has been sitting on my porch for the last week. So today I decided I'd just fix it myself. Amelia offered to be my assistant and hold the drill for me. :-)

First, I had to take the old blinds down. Then I had to clean everything, the piece from my front porch was filthy and it had definitely been a while since I washed the blinds in the house too. Next I took the old blinds apart completely. Finally I was able to put it all back together again with the new pieces and rehang it all. I probably won't attempt taking the vertical blinds down again on my own, it's heavy and really awkward. But on the plus side, we can eat dinner without the sun in our faces. Woohoo.

What are you tackling this week? Leave me a comment and tell me about it.

Monday, November 02, 2009

My menus might seem a bit random this week, but my freezer and my pantry are overflowing, so I'm trying to use up stuff we have. It's about time for me to go through it all again and purge stuff that's expired or we won't eat.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

It's time once again for the NaBloPoMo. (Try saying that five times fast!) My goal this year is to get through all thirty days, posting every day. We'll see if I can do it. What about the rest of you? Are any of you participating? Leave me a comment and I'll visit your blog. Happy NaBloPoMo! :-)

Friday, October 23, 2009

Amelia was sick on the day that her preschool class had signups for the Halloween party. Apparently no one wanted to do the crafts, so that's all that was left. I need two craft ideas. It's a group of ten to twenty children, all of them are four or five.

I found one that looks really cute, it's sparkly spiders. But, I still need another craft project. Anyone have any ideas? I'll post more craft projects as I find them.

Edited to add: I found another cute craft that I think might be a bit simpler for 4 year olds. What do you all think?It's a paper plate pumpkin. I thought it was pretty cute.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

For this weeks project, I went through all of Amelia's clothes. Her dresser, the closet, the bins of too big and too small clothes, and even the items she hides under her bed were subjected to scrutiny. (Yes, my daughter hides clothes under her bed, usually for one of two reasons. One is she doesn't want to part with them, so she doesn't want me to wash them. The other is she's too lazy to walk five feet to the hamper and throw them in. God help me when she's a teenager!)

I'm also participating in Laura's monthly roundup at orgjunkie.com. The roundup for this month is to organize a drawer, so my task fit right in.

Here are the before pictures of her dresser. I didn't take pictures of the closet. Look at all those clothes on her dresser! That's how she puts clothes away. Yes, they are all clean.

I'm pretty sure my Mom would tell you that my drawers looked like this when I was little too. Although I didn't have a little brother that I needed to hide plastic screwdrivers from.

Here it is all empty. You can sort of see the containers I put in the top drawer to organize her bathing suits, tights, leotards, undies and socks. Once everything was out of the dresser, Amelia and I sorted all of it together. She played fashion show and tried things on. Too small stuff went in a plastic bag to be given away. She also had some stuff in there that was still too big, so those went in a plastic bin. Those go up in her closet and when she needs more clothes we check there before buying her new things. We also pared down the amount of clothes she has. I tried to keep it to 7 of each thing (tshirts, dresses, warm shirts etc. )

And we're done! The drawers are all organized and no longer overflowing. The bin went up in the closet and the bag of clothes have been passed on to a friend for her daughter.

This is a closeup of the top drawer. It seems like this drawer is usually the biggest mess, and Amelia can never find her tights for ballet, or a bathing suit when she needs one. So now everything has it's own area. Hopefully that helps when she is putting her clothes away and when we are getting ready to go somewhere.

Go visit orgjunkie.com for more organization, and 5minutesformom.com for more Tackle it Tuesdays. Leave me a comment if you participated too!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A few weeks ago a couple of friends and I took our kids to the Skirball Cultural Center in LA. They have a large museum there, and a huge Noah's Ark exhibit. The kids had an amazing time. I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because even with 3 adults and 3 kids, there was a lot of chasing going on!

Amelia and Sydney out in another part of the Center. it was really beautiful up there.

Waiting for the animals to drop out of the ark. Sydney was somewhere else turning a crank that carried the stuffed animals up into the ark.In this room there was all sorts of stuff the kids could touch and turn and make noise with. Many of the cranks and levers made noises or winds to represent the great storm.

Anthony was making it rain.

More noisemakers, Anthony loved these!

A small part of the Ark that the kids could climb in and out of.This was one of Anthony's favorite parts. It's a model of the ark, with a plethora of animals to play with and move around.

Amelia really enjoyed it too.

Anthony's favorite part though was the poop. With all of those animals there would have been a lot of excrement right? So they had a basket full of rubber poo from all different animals. The kids could dump out the "treasures" and they they used brooms and dustpans and mops to clean it up. It was really cute, even though it sounds gross.

In one of the rooms there is a net tunnel. The kids climbed up in it, and the could go all around the top of the room.

In the last room they had a little jam session.

The kids got instruments to play and the employees played some drums.

After we were done inside we went outside and the kids got to participate in an archaeological dig.

A couple sitting next to us had a little boy about Anthony's size. The father asked me if Anthony was also 3 ( like their son.) He was a little surprised when I told him no, the little man is 1. He's getting close to 2 though!

And the parting shot. In the stroller, with his bluh bluh, Ant was ready for a nap!

About Me

I'm a stay at home mom with two not so small anymore children, and a hubby who works, a lot! I do childcare too.Four years ago we moved to a new city. I like to sew, scrapbook and be crafty. I've lost 160lbs. I eat weird foods because of it. I'd like to lose 20 more. I rarely get a second to myself and most days, I'm just trying to stay sane. :-)